30-08-2018, 05:37 AM
I was looking through the summary "conclusions" chart at the beginning of the Tucker, Janick book and I think Stephen Bax is unfairly represented.
I didn't agree with Bax on very much and I said so, because I feel it's important to debate research specifics if they don't hold up to scrutiny. How else do you get things moving in the right direction?
But, I also believe in being fair and I don't think the citation on Bax is fair.
The authors chose to represent him only in terms of "Incorrect plant identifications". Bax's focus was not plants. He only identified about three (one of which was a prior identification by other researchers that most people agreed on). The majority of Bax's research was linguistic, which is not even mentioned. It would have been better to leave him out altogether than to imply that he spent significant time identifying plants and did it wrongly. It greatly mischaracterizes his academic focus and findings.
I didn't agree with Bax on very much and I said so, because I feel it's important to debate research specifics if they don't hold up to scrutiny. How else do you get things moving in the right direction?
But, I also believe in being fair and I don't think the citation on Bax is fair.
The authors chose to represent him only in terms of "Incorrect plant identifications". Bax's focus was not plants. He only identified about three (one of which was a prior identification by other researchers that most people agreed on). The majority of Bax's research was linguistic, which is not even mentioned. It would have been better to leave him out altogether than to imply that he spent significant time identifying plants and did it wrongly. It greatly mischaracterizes his academic focus and findings.